Hangama Amiri

COOPER COLE is pleased to present Mirrors and Faces, a solo presentation of the work of Hangama Amiri. This is the artist’s first exhibition at the gallery.

In this new body of work, Amiri reflects on questions of ‘home’ and memory after migration. Amiri’s penetrating observations of her domestic space opens up into the emotive and imaginative aspects of cultural memory, touching on feelings of loneliness, isolation, love, intimacy, and longing. She elaborates on these inquiries with fantastical elements such as foliage, birds, tears, and spilled wine, overlaid and overflowing out of the images, visualizing a weaving of internal dialogues with lived experience.

While the artist was creating this work and reflecting on her experience as an Afghan woman in the United States, feelings of loss and mourning quickly deepened as her new country of residence retreated from their occupation in Afghanistan and Amiri’s hometown of Kabul was taken over by the Taliban. The artist’s examination of internal conflict and physical confinement took on new dimensions. In Wounded Deer, Amiri depicts herself looking at an arrow that is aimed at her eyes, at the same time as it punctures a deer on its side. Set in a swirling, surreal landscape, this work expresses the artist’s feelings of vulnerability and betrayal as an Afghan woman. Her works are large in scale, negotiating desires to occupy, dominate, and assert power.

Trained in painting, Amiri takes a painterly approach to her textile compositions. Sourcing most of her materials from an Afghan-owned store in New York’s fashion district, the artist looks for fabrics as one would look for oils and acrylics. Colour, texture, and composition remain central, but Amiri’s interest in textile is rooted in the medium’s flexibility, functionality, and intimacy. Textile, according to the artist, awakens the senses because of its relationship to the body, insinuations of touch, and its ability to carry memories.